The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 eBook

He bowed to Elizabeth. But the next instant she
saw him looking intently at some one behind her in
the crowd, and she felt sure that Katie was giving
him her silent farewell. While she dropped her
eyes as if this parting were not for strangers to
watch, the shouts of the crowd on shore and the cheers
of the soldiers marked the widening space between
ship and shore.

When Mr. Royal’s horses were turned about, Elizabeth
found that Katie Archdale had been almost directly
behind. She was with her aunt and uncle.
Kenelm Waldo sat beside her, while Lord Bulchester
with one foot on the ground and the other on the step
of the carriage, talked from the opposite side.
Katie turned readily from one to the other, and if
she intercepted an angry glance, her eyes grew brighter
and her brilliant smile deepened. Her laugh was
not forced, it came with that musical ripple which
had always added so much to her fascination.

Elizabeth caught it as she passed with a bow, and
a grave face. After all, she thought, Katie could
not have seen Mr. Archdale the moment before.

CHAPTER XXIII.

KATIE ARCHDALE.

It was a beautiful morning, warmer than May mornings
usually are in Boston. But the warm sunshine
that came into the drawing-room where Katie Archdale
was seated was unheeded. Katie was still at her
uncle’s and that morning, as she had been very
many mornings of late, was much occupied with a visitor
who sat on the sofa beside her with an assumption
of privilege which his diffident air at times failed
to carry out well.

“Are you quite sure, Lord Bulchester?”
she asked. And her voice had a touch of tremulousness,
so inspiring to lovers.

“Sure? Am I sure?” he asked, his
little figure expanding in his earnestness, his face
aglow with an emotion which gave dignity to his plain
features. “Sure that I love you?”
he repeated wonderingly. “How could anybody
help it?”

“Then its not any especial discernment in you?”
Her tones had the softness of a coquetry about to
lose itself in a glad submission to a power higher
than its own.

“No,” he sighed. “And, yet,
it is some special discernment. For, if not,
why should I love you better than anyone else does?”

“Do you?” The arch glance softened to
suit his mood, half bewildered him with ecstasy.
To the music of them the drawing-room seemed to heighten
and broaden before his eyes, and to lengthen out into
vistas of the halls and parks of his own beautiful
home, Lyburg Chase, and through them all, Katie moved,
and gave them a new charm. And, then, he seemed
to be in different places on the Continent, among the
Swiss Mountains, beside the Italian lakes, in gay
Paris, and every where Katie moved by his side, and
gave new life to the familiar scenes.

“Give me my answer to-day,” he cried;
“for to-day my treasure, you are sure of yourself,
to-day you know that you love me.”